New ADASS President outlines “most essential task” of educating public on social care

ADASS President, Glen Garrod & Caroline Dinenage, Minister of State at the Department of Health and Social Car

The New ADASS President, Glen Garrod, Director of Adult Social Services for Lincolnshire, has outlined the “opportunities” he sees in Adult Social Care for the next year, ahead of his taking over the chain of office at the organisation later on today.

Garrod, who succeeds Margaret Willcox in the role, will describe educating the public on the importance of social care and funding it as “the most essential task” for the sector ahead of the upcoming green paper this summer.

He will also argue that delivering individual, person-centred care is essential to support the ageing population at the ADASS Spring Seminar in Yarnfield, Staffordshire, saying: “Whether it’s the young adult with a profound disability or the grandparent with dementia, social care is there for us when we are at our most vulnerable. Helping the public to understand our contribution is perhaps our single most important task over the next year. They are the force for change to be reckoned with, the power to be harnessed.”

The preventative and essential role of social care is often less well understood by the public when compared to the NHS’ front-line services. Adult social care services face an overall £2 billion shortfall in their finances by 2020.

With the Government’s green paper and work concerning working age adults on social care due in coming months, ADASS has indicated that it will attempt to galvanise public opinion to ensure that the government can deliver a long-term funding proposal for social care.

Mr Garrod will argue forperson-centred, individualised care as he opens his tenure: “Personalisation is our space, we cannot stagnate and watch other areas pass us by. There can be no excuses. This explosion of opportunities to expand personalisation is within our gift to reinforce and rejuvenate and it is essential that we deliver it.”

Comparing the ability of other sectors to harness technologies that can deliver individualised services, such as transport or finance, Mr Garrod will argue for a similar approach with social care: “We desperately need to see ‘creative disruption’ in social care, and in order to do that, we must encourage many more people to manage their care according to their own needs and desires.”

With this in mind, Mr Garrod, whose wife is a GP, will acknowledge that though there are opportunities for the NHS and social care to work together, the upcoming social care green paper must provide a long-term funding solution for social care as a discipline in itself.

He will say: “Any relationship, personal or professional, depends on differences being respected, working alongside one another, and recognising that sometimes disagreement is helpful. This “critical friend” relationship is one that ADASS will develop with the NHS over the course of my presidency.

Caroline Dineage MP, the Minister for Social Care, has welcomed Garrod’s appointment, saying that: “The social care sector, and the workforce that underpins it, fulfils an essential role in caring for society’s most vulnerable people. However, it’s clear that the system is facing unprecedented pressures as a result of our ageing population.

“I look forward to working closely with the new President of the Association of Directors of Social Services on our forthcoming Green Paper. This will set out vital reforms to support the social care workforce, find a sustainable financial footing and bring health and social care closer together to deliver the best quality of care into the future.”